Naruto. Damn I hate that little fox-faced ninja, even while I enjoy his ongoing adventures.

Alas, the best candidates that I see to eventually displace ninjas from the top of the manga rankings... are Vampires. I hate Vampires, too. I feel like a statistician played by Bruce Campbell stuck in a movie plot that I just can't win. (Disclaimer: I look nothing like the One True Bruce.) And Yes, I am most thankful there are only a couple of 'zombie' titles in the manga fold, else I'd have to give this up because at that point (Zombie vs. Vampire vs. Ninja) I think it'd become an internet meme and then all the cool kids would be doing it.

Both Vampire Knight and Rosario+Vampire are doing quite well for series with only 5-6 books out; I only see those scores going up as more volumes become available. If 7 or 8 titles all eventually rank in the top 100, these will displace Death Note and Fruits Basket for the 3-4 spots and may even knock off Bleach. Naruto is safe at #1 for the next 6 months to a year, though (maybe longer)

In place of unit sales ("real" data, considered proprietary and a closely held secret of all publishers and retailers) these manga rankings use scores assigned to tiles based on how highly the volumes place on online sales sites' posted "bestseller" lists, or a search of their manga offerings sorted by popularity. The higher the placement, the higher the score, obviously.

Data from bookstores are weighted higher, as are the hourly bestsellers & manga category results from Amazon.

Math Note: In place of point totals in the thousands and thousands, series scores use a formula that sets the No. 1 (Naruto, currently) at 100 points, with everyone else scoring some fraction of that. (it's a straight scalar so all scores are still proportional)

Matt Blind is a bookseller: that's his day job, working as an asst. manager at a far-flung outpost of one of the big box chains. He is also a big fan of manga, has been a blogger of one stripe or another since aught-four, drinks too much, and remembers enough discrete math from his classes at Georgia Tech to construct the truly frightening spreadsheet that spits out these charts.

Matt maintains his own site at RocketBomber.com where he occasionally posts manga reviews, book retail & publishing news, and commentary on fandom in general -- but mostly wastes his time (and yours) with posts on the ever-changing variations and derivatives of these manga charts.

Readers with questions, comments or corrections should email Matt at, not surprisingly, matt[at]rocketbomber[dot]com.